A Boy in Eirinn - Illustrated by Jack B. Yeats

By Pádraic Colum and Jack Yeats

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Apr 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781473382374

Pádraic Colum

Padraic Colum (1881–1972) was a poet, a playwright, and a leader of the Irish Renaissance, but he is best known for his works for children, including The Children of Odin and The Golden Fleece (a Newbery Honor Book).

Book preview

A BOY IN EIRINN

CHAPTER I

HOW FINN O’DONNELL GOT HIS NAME

FINN O’DONNELL had a father and mother, of course, and in addition to these two grandmothers and a grandfather. Now, on the day he was born and the day following that there was great debate in the house concerning the name to be given him. His father wanted to call him Matthew after a comrade who had gone to America, and his mother wished to name him Dominick after her own father. It might have been settled to call the child Matthew Dominick or Dominick Mathew, only his grandfather interposed with an extraordinary name.

Call him Finn, said he, Finn O’Donnell. Finn MacCoul was the best of Ireland’s heroes and it’s time that one of the O’Donnells should bear his name.

Thereupon the house became filled with argument. Finn was not the name of any saint nor of any pious person, said his mother’s mother; Finn was not a name in either family, said his father’s mother, and for her part, she did not see why the child should not be called Manus after his grandfather who was the head of the house. No one they knew had the name of Finn, said his father; it was the name that might be given to a hound, and the child that had it would be mocked at. It wasn’t right, said his mother, that her child should be given a name out of old stories.

The child’s grandfather left the three women and the man to debate the question amongst themselves and went out to the garden to dig round his gooseberry bushes.

The next day, towards dusk, the child’s father came out for him and brought him into the room where the women were. Everybody was silent now.

We give in to your choice, said the father, and We will call him Finn to please you, said the mother.

Thereupon the grandfather went to his chest and taking his purse out of it produced three golden sovereigns which he laid down as an offering for the child. The next day he was christened and given the name of Finn.

It was his grandfather, Manus O’Donnell, who owned the house in which Finn, his father and mother and grandmother lived. Before it was a garden with gooseberry and currant bushes and with a bee-hive placed in the shelter of a ditch. In the warm days the young calves lay in this garden and the bees hummed round the currant bushes. A high fuchsia hedge divided it from the roadway and a fuchsia bush with scarlet and purple pendants grew before the door. The road that went by the house was nearly always empty, but one could hear the carts creaking on another road that was across the bog. This road went from the country town to the villages in the mountains and one could see, behind the carts, the mountain horses striding along, each carrying a man with a woman seated behind him. Always above that country there were big gray clouds, and across it, marking one field from another, ran little walls of loose stones. One could see smooth mown fields with cocks of hay beside dark-green fields of potatoes and little fields of yellowing corn. Houses were scattered here and there; they were low, whitewashed and thatched with straw that had become brown in the weather.

Finn’s grandfather was a weaver. Inside the house there were two great looms, the wood of which, though hard and massive, was filled with little holes. The floor of the kitchen was covered with flags that were cracked in many places; the walls were brown and the rafters black with smoke. The fire was not on the grate; it was laid on the stones of the hearth, and it was not of coal, but of sods of peat¹ or turf, as they are called in Ireland. Out of the wide, projecting chimney a crook descended, on which a pot or a kettle was always hanging. The house had two doors in a single doorway: the outer one was so low that a child could look across it; it was kept closed against the hens during the day-time, and at night the full inner door was closed behind it. Near the door was a dresser filled with plates and dishes, mugs, jugs and cups, and hung round with shining tins. Between the dresser and the hearth was a sort of wooden sofa that could be opened into a bed; it was called the settle, and strangers who came to the house slept in it. There was also a great press, a big wooden chest, stools, and a wooden chair at the hearth for Finn’s grandmother or grandfather. Near the door was a harness-rack that held a saddle and bridle and a horse’s collar. There were three cages on the walls—a linnet was in one, a goldfinch in another and a lark in the third.

This was the kitchen. There were two rooms off it and a loft above it. The room in which his grandfather and grandmother slept was full of sacred pictures, and it had a shrine with a little lamp burning before it. In the room that was his father’s and mother’s there were brass instruments that had been left by his uncle Bartley who was now living in the town, and there was a clock that was called Wag o’ the Wall. It was a clock-face only with weights and chains hanging down. This clock had a loud tick and when it came near striking it would stop like a person catching breath.

Outside there was a stack of black peat that was fuel for the year, and near it was the shed for the donkey cart and the horse cart. At the side of the house was the byre or stable in which the two cows, the two calves and the horse were kept and in which the hens roosted at night. The ass and the goats were left to themselves and they had taken shelter in the shed beside the carts; and the geese, when they returned in the evening, would settle themselves under the shelter of the upturned carts.

Finn’s grandfather, as I have told you, was a weaver. The people would leave him yarn at a certain time of the year and he would weave it into the gray cloth they used for their dress. He once had several men working in the house with him but the people bought in the shops more and more and now there was not so much work to be done at the looms. Manus and his son John, Finn’s father, did all the weaving that came to them and they were not busy now. Besides their looms they had three fields and they owned two cows, a horse, and sheep and pigs. Often Finn’s father went over to England or Scotland to work there in the harvest, and then his grandfather, with the women helping him, mowed the field, dug the potatoes and reaped the oats. Finn’s mother, before she was married, had been in America where she had earned her dowry—that is the money she possessed when she got married.

Finn’s grandfather was very much honored in the district. He remembered the histories, the stories and poems that had been handed down, and he read Irish manuscripts which he had collected. He had the secret of making medicine from herbs and was reputed to have a cure for cancer. People from far places would come to consult him about this disease, and they would often stay a night in the house sleeping in the settle bed. He spoke Irish and English, but his wife, Finn’s grandmother, spoke Irish only, and Finn’s father and mother spoke English mainly. Finn, like his grandfather, spoke both languages.

As little Finn grew up he was much in the company of his grandfather, who taught him to be proud of the name he had given him. But the first day he went to school the teacher showed that she thought Finn was an unusual name, and the children, when it was called off the roll, laughed at it. After a while, however, everyone got used to it and there was no more about it than if Manus O’Donnell’s grandson had been called John or James. People told him that he had his name from Finn MacCoul, and some said that this Finn was a giant and others that he was a soldier who had fought for Ireland.

Once, when his uncle Bartley was taking him across a field, Finn saw three great stones, two upright and a third laid across. So high were the upright stones that a man could not reach their tops, and with the third laid across they were as high as a man with a boy standing on his shoulders. His uncle told him that these were stones that the mighty men of the old days in Ireland put above their friends. And he told him, too, that Finn MacCoul, or one of Finn’s men, was buried under the stones. When he went home that evening he asked his grandfather to tell him about the Finn MacCoul after whom he was named. And that night while a great piece of bog-wood blazed in the fire his grandfather told the child the story of The Boyhood of Finn MacCoul.²

CHAPTER II

THE BOYHOOD OF FINN MAC COUL

YOU must know, my young hero, that our country was once defended by a band of heroes called the Fianna of Ireland. It was required of each that he should have truth in his heart and strength in his hands and that he should be faithful to whatever captain was placed over the band. Now the first captain was Trenmor and the second was Coul, the son of Trenrnor. Coul made many enemies and they all joined together under the leadership of a lord named Goll, the son of Morna. Goll’s men went into battle with Coul’s men and defeated them. Goll cut off the head of Coul and became Captain of the Fianna of Ireland. Now there was also a bag of treasures which the Captain of the Fianna possessed. This bag did not come into the hands of Goll, for it was taken away by the keeper of Coul’s treasures. It was a wonderful bag, made out of the skin of a heron and containing magical things. Goll was not fully captain while he was without this bag.

Coul left one son behind him and he, being in dread of Goll, who now served the King of Ireland, went into Scotland and took service there with a King. And another son was born to Coul’s wife after her husband was killed. She gave him the name of Demna and being fearful that Goll or some of his friends would hear of his existence and kill him she gave the child into the charge of a wise woman.

This woman carried the little child through solitude after solitude until she came to the Sleeve Bloom mountains in the middle of Ireland. She built a hut there and reared Demna in a wood. He was soon able to race the hare in the meadow and capture the wild duck and her brood on the lake. One day he ran down a deer and caught it and brought it back to the hut. And when the wise woman saw him return with his capture she knew that he was fit to go into the world to seek his own. So she told him of his father and bade him go forth and win for himself the captainship of the noble Fianna of Ireland.

So young Demna went through the woods and plains of Ireland eating wild fruits and catching the deer and the hare for his food. He came near the place where Dublin now stands, and there on a green level place he saw hurley a-playing, twelve a side. And with the stick he had in his hand young Demna joined in the game. He kept the ball so much to himself that the youths sent six of the players against him, but in spite of such odds Demna won the game. The youths told the Prince of the strange boy who was so strong and so active and the Prince asked them to describe him.

He is fair-haired, they said.

Then the Prince named the boy Finn, that is, fair-haired. The next day when he appeared the youths called out, Here is Finn, and that was the way he got his name.

Well, they saw he was going to enter the game again and so they sent eight against him. Finn played against the eight boys and won the game. He went away after that, but the next day he appeared again and this time the twenty-four boys defended a goal against him. But he won past them for all their efforts. Then the boys raised their hurl-sticks and attacked him, but Finn laid about him so well with his hurl that he laid several prostrate on the ground.

He went towards the south then, and came to a blacksmith’s house where he stayed for a time.

Make me two spears, he said to the smith.

The smith made him the spears and Finn when he got them into his hands started off. The smith warned him not to take a certain path through the forest, for there was a boar there that had destroyed half a county. Finn took the pass and came upon the boar. He plunged at the beast and killed him with his spear. Then he brought the dead boar back to the smith as payment for the spears.

While Finn was in that country he took service with a prince. While he was in that service he showed such strength and such courage that the prince often said:—

Only I know that Coul left only one son and that he is in service with the King of Scotland, I would think that this boy was the son of Coul and the grandson of Trenmor.

And everything the boy did showed such nobility that the prince was at last convinced that Finn was the son of Coul and the rightful captain of the Fianna of Ireland.

Then he called the boy to him and told him that he would like him to leave his service. Many, he said, thought he was the son of Coul and